Pan Am Cup - CASH MONEY!

The highly anticipated Pan American Cup has come and gone. It completely lived up to the hype as Mark and Pat both scored over 7000 points and won some decent money on some huge cheques.

 Mark went into this weekend with the goal of making coach James nauseated as many times as possible. I think he succeeded in this goal by faulting his first two jumps in long jump, his first two throws in discus, and his first two attempts at his opening height in pole vault; leaving success in all three to the third and final attempt. Long jump was a HUGE success with a 17cm PB (Personal Best) of 7.18m. He also had strong races in all the running events getting very close to his PB in all 3 sprints and PBing  in the 1500m where he ran a ballsy race where he lead and fought the wind the whole way.
Pat also had strong running races with a PB in the 100m and a near PB in the hurdles. His success in the running had one exception: the 400m which I didn't have the pleasure of seeing. I am told Pat took it out like a champion leading the pack to 200m at PB 200m pace. At this point, considering competitors seeded more than 2 seconds faster than him hadn't past him, Pat knew he was in trouble. He grinded through the rest of the race and wasn't thrilled with the time but is now stronger for having run it. Fortunately he did not die the same way in the 1500m and he finished strong tying his PB. Pat was also happy with a very strong shot put of 14.78m.

With their combined scores Canada won the team title and won a trophy. Like a boss!

Check out the full results here:
http://athleticsvideos.com/Live_Results/2012/Combined_Events/

As for myself, I competed in the Ontario open category. This was my first decathlon of the year and was a decent opener. No PB's but I got a nice little video of my long jump.

We finished off with a fun night of team bonding. Next focus: National Championships! Until next time, later days!

May long weekend.

     This has been the nicest weekend of summer, we finally saw the sun for more than 1 hour at a time. Chen and I (Pat), took this opportunity to bask in the glory of a 4 hour workout saturday morning. The saturday workout was a mock day 1, it was Chen's first full workout since his back injury thingy that he had going on. He now remembers what it feels like to run at full speed. In other track news the Pan-Am team was announced this week, Chen and I will be representing Canada! I am very excited for this opportunity, as not many people get to represent their country in their very own hometown.  The PanAm section is going to have 4 countries: USA, Cuba, Mexico and Canada. Not nearly as many countries as the females :( but still an awesome mix.
The open section is very competitive also, seeing athletes congregating in the nations capital from BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan. There will be national champions and a few americans raising the competition to a level not typically experienced at the Provincial level.

     Reid has continued to enjoy his time on the left side of the country, seeing friends and getting in his own training. Reid is feeling recharged and ready to open up his season this weekend. His flight is arriving tonight at 10:35pm, yahoo! The threesome will be complete once again. We are ready to have him back.

   
     Check out this hunk with his new GoPro camera and cliff jumping. No wonder he missed home, look at this! Lets see how creative things get with this new little toy of his. First person vaulting?

                                                     (Great hang technique from Reid. Beauty!)
                                                    *Thanks P.Little for the hooks on the pics :)
                       
     Now, back to this weather we are having. I bet you are all wondering what we did with it...right!? Of course you are. Well heres a nice couple shots of Chen and I enjoying a walk up the Ottawa River, literally.

     After our long saturday workout we went for some all you can eat sushi, I then had a 4 hour movie nap with Wedding Crashers and Old School on the tele. Chen had to work and battled the urge to vomit all the dead fish he just ingested, too much info?

     Today we spent the day outside, we played some frisbee golf, lounged in the river for a while, made some AMAZING sandwiches, they were massive triple deckers. We then had a nap and went back out to play some american football. Just such a great weekend. Very relaxing! Sorry to those of you who had to be indoors this weekend, my most sincere condolences.

   







Checking out this view. Lazy Sunday was a success. Must revisit again this summer. There was a constant flow of people sliding, sitting, and enjoying this crossing all day long.

A Very Happy Mother's Day

This week was a long and somewhat frustrating week of sitting out practices or doing modified workouts and numerous visits to RE:FORM.  Pat was a bit more successful in workouts although had to nurse one of those nagging/annoying pains that comes with the territory.  So for both of us, it was nice to end it all with a trip out to Pat's parents place for Mother's Day weekend.  We had a fun-filled day of canoeing, crayfish hunting and finished it off with a fantastic meat filled dinner (lamb and steak!). 

Here's the crayfish with a very cautious Pat (taken with my new favourite app Instagram!) 

We even found what Pat and I think is Osprey remains.  The kids loved it!

Then Sunday we travelled to visit Pat's Oma who has made an unbelievable recovery over the past few weeks.  Those resilient Dutch!  Pat and I even found a way to train for javelin by using his Oma's clothes line as a throwing implement.  Shocking that the thrower beat me, but it was close! 


Reid spent Mother's Day back home in Vancouver with his mum (very excited I'm sure), sisters and his little nieces and nephew.  He followed it up by completely a brutal hill workout with buddy and fellow athlete Mike, that apparently puts hill workouts here to shame (I guess those mountains really do make things harder, who would have known?). While home Reid has been training hard and seeing as much of friends and family as possible in his remaining days there. He even went skeet shooting yesterday with close friend (and shotgun) Tatum...That's right, he named his shotgun!  


It's always fun to see families get together and made me a little bit jealous of Reid getting to see his over the weekend.  Either way it was a great way to relax, get healed and rejuvenate before the upcoming Pan Am Cup in 2 weeks.  Until next time! 
    

Heading Home

This week I (Reid) was feeling homesick. With the help of my amazing sister I was able to come home on a spontaneous trip to surprise my family and friends. Me and my good friend Mike worked out a plan to surprise our friend Erik with this news. Mike and Erik both got in Mike's car. As Mike backed out of the driveway at a seemingly reckless pace I hid around the corner at the bottom with a bike. When he got to me I slapped the back of the car and he slammed on the breaks. I lay face down on the ground as Mike told Erik that he hit someone. After they stood over my body and Erik panicked for a minute I rolled over and showed my face to a stunned Erik.    IT      WAS     AWESOME.
Now that I'm here for the next two weeks I can spend some time with these funny kiddies


Pat also headed home for some family time this past weekend to recover after a tough week of training. For Saturday's practice I was already in Van and Mark was sitting out with a sore ovary (or hip or something) so our coach Ry Row decided to pace Patty's running by riding next to him on his bike. All of this tough running is geared to get us fit for the Pan American Cup at the end of the month in Ottawa. The Canadian team was decided yesterday, but won't be officially announced until later this week. We're hoping that we all get to put on Canada gear together for this one: fingers crossed.

Mandrea's better half is also heading home today. She is spending the whole summer working in her home town of Sault St. Marie. She had better be planning on coming back to Ottawa once in awhile!

Until next time, later days!
Here is a picture featured on the sports experts web page of Pat playing Mr.Model.

ROJO in Cornell

Hello to our lovely readers, #visitors :) I got twitter this week (@arbsy). It has been a very exiting time in my life. I am already at 48 followers, no big deal. In track news Chen and I had a short lived recovery week. We kicked off our weekend with a not-so-pleasant speed endurance workout. 4x120, 250+120, lactic much. As our month comes to an end, we soon begin the month of the Pan Am combined events meet here in lovely Ottawa. We're all feeling good and are excited as hell for the meet!

Friday was a relaxing day for all as Reid and loyal girlfriend Jojo (Reid+Jojo=ROJO) enjoyed a double date day with Chen and beautiful girlfriend Andrea (Mark+Andrea=Mandrea). ROJO and Mandrea went to see 21 Jump Street, and apparently had quite the laugh. I wouldn't know though because I was not invited... Following this Reid cooked up a storm in the kitchen and hammered out some amazing eats to the hungry peasants, complete with entrees and a desert.

All fuelled up, Reid was ready to attack his first meet of the year in Cornell, Ithica. Opening his outdoor season with the 110 high hurdles, a little bit of Pole Vault, and some 4x4 action. Reid has been recovering like a champ from his set back and as Coach Jamesy says: he has been training "angry."
The conditions in Cornell were not ideal as strong winds made for a tricky competition. On the bright side, the sun was out (pun intended). Reid hurdled himself to a 16.56, not too shabby for a cold windy day. Competing in an open Vault meet, the starting height was a respectable 4.20m. Unfortunately Reid was unable to make a clearance as the wind at his back made his poles too soft and mark inconsistent. Finishing off a long day at the track Reid split a 50.2sec.
Check out Reid's new look >

That sums up another week in the decathlon lives of your 3 most adored athletes :P
Look foreword to our next blog entry as we continue to look foreword to leaving the dome for the beautiful Mooney's Bay facility, #PanAmCupDecathlon.

Heres some dec love to get you through the week, so long!

Not so SUNY Cortland

Another week down, and we made it a good one.  A few members from our training group including Pat, Zachary, JoJo, Michelle and myself travelled down to SUNY Cortland (State University of New York) for our first decathlon and heptathlon of the year and Pat's second.  

A helpful tailwind started off Day 1 and kept rolling for the remainder of our events.  Sending me to my second best 100m (11.10s) and Pat a PB (11.63s).  After running myself into a bit of trouble in the long jump starting off with two fouls, leaving a very important and very nerve racking last attempt where I mustered a 6.97m jump!  Sadly this is not the first time I've done this to myself this year...I must help myself out a bit more and get jumps in on the first attempt!  The rest of the day went along smoothly and ended with a surprisingly calm evening for the 400m.  Wish that could be said for Day 2..

Day 2 began as a beautiful but overcast day. It quickly darkened during the running of hurdles (coming from indoors 10 hurdles is far!). Shortly after the long day of rain began, making the throwing events especially challenging. Despite the less than ideal conditions Pat still was able to hold onto the discus long enough to throw it a PB distance of 48.83m. Luckily the kind people of Cortland State moved the pole vault into their repurposed airplane hanger that is now an indoor track facility.  This proved quite beneficial as both Pat and I had PB's in the vault with Pat jumping 4.20m and myself 3.90m.  Next was the absolute worst conditions for a javelin competition we have endured.  It was raining, a cool 6 degrees and on GRASS!  Not to mention grass with potholes, rocks and divots making full runways absolutely out of the question leaving room for only muscling it out there.  Needless to say we were all way off our normal throws.  However, it was an experience and an obstacle we dealt with and got through, now anything will be better and absolutely welcomed compared to that.  

And then all that was left was a rather uneventful yet still exciting 1500m.  Prior to the race Coach James told me I needed a 4:51.00 to reach 7000pts, and after crossing the line seeing 4:51.xx showing up I was quite nervous that I missed the mark by mere points.  Then he proceeds to tell me about a time he scored his PB 6999pts. He told how awful it was to have this PB stand for a year.  At this point I'm fearing the worst and accepting the loss.  Then he tells me that he was a big fat liar and all I needed was a 4:54.00. I actually scored 7033pts...needless to say I got James'd (a slogan we coined for being smeckledorfed by James).  Very funny coach!  Pat finished with a solid second decathlon of the season with a third all-time best 6910pts.  Congrats!

Overall a very solid decathlon for all and a new experience, as all decathlons are. 

As for Reid, he spent the weekend finishing his last exam of the school year and began celebrating his summer with a trip to the casino winning himself a handsome $70. With some of his winnings he made a trip down to Chinatown to a shady little acupuncture store. He walked away with his own set of needles so he can practice unlicensed acupuncture on his and Pat's legs. He's seen it done in movies and is convinced it's easy enough. Nice work all around this weekend I'd say..Until next week!      

For all those interested here is a link to the results!

http://www.leonetiming.com/2012/Outdoor/Cortland/   

Lastly, a big congrats to our teammate Zachary Kevlar for his pb in the dec. 

Summer is Almost Here

This week Pat took full advantage of the weather as the summer sun made its appearance. It is still not quite hot enough to train outside, but that didn't stop him from playing the very legitimate sport of frisbee golf this Saturday.

I on the other hand was trying to stay awake and study. I don't know which reason made it more difficult to stay awake: the brutal 1500m workout that all three of us completed earlier in the day or my realization that I don't care whether or not the Real Business Cycle predictions reflect the actual deviations observed in the economy. That reminds me, I have good news for all of you. On Friday I write my last final exam and commence a four month summer vacation, so that was the last random economics reference you will have to endure for a very long time :)

Mark has been in much the same situation as I with writing finals. He wrote 2 last week and only has 2 more to go.

This coming week will have Pat already preparing to compete in his second decathlon of the year alongside Mark who will be contesting his first. The destination is not nearly as exotic as Arizona this time unfortunately, instead the forecast is for just above freezing temperatures with rain. I will be continuing to transition back into as much training as my rib will allow.

Last thing I want to say is CONGRATS to our awesome coach James and his lovely wife Vero for celebrating their 2 year anniversary last week!